Soothing Mind Control

In a previous article I mentioned Mind Control, and mentioned its single great weakness is the range. 20 yards, and humanoids only. After a lot of practice, I need to update this with something REALLY important.

Mind Soothe. Never control a mind without it – in PVE, however, because it won’t do you any good in PVP. OK, into some nuts and bolts.

First, there are a lot of mobs who can have their minds controlled but who are in groups. And I’m not just talking outside, but in instances. Let’s take a look, again, at the tooltip for the mind control:

Mind Control
Rank 3
750 Mana
20 yd range
3 sec cast
Controls a humanoid mind up to level 62, but increases the time between attacks by 25%. Lasts up to 1 min.

First order of business – the level 62 is wrong. It is actually up to four levels above your own. So – provided they’re not immune – a level 70 can mind control anything up to level 74. Since bosses are (for now) 73… Sad to say, all the bosses at which I’ve looked so far have been immune to mind control. On the other hand I’ve not spent much time looking as at that level healing is taking up a huge amount of my time. Anyway…

The “Big Pain” for mind control in PVE has always been the range – cast time being a strong second that we’ll ignore for a moment. In Outland instances – especially heroics – the mobs will aggro on you before you’re in casting range. But this is where your “smart priest” comes into play. See, the range of these guys is around 25 yards – you can cast to pull your longer-ranged stuff, it’s just that 20 yard hurdle that’s too close. Keep that 25 yard distance in mind and let’s look at the other spell:

10 extra yards. In other words, if you’ve soothed the mind(s) of the mob(s) that can detect you, when you’re at 20 yards you have the same aggro pull as a mob at 30 yards. 30 yards, when mind control is ‘only’ 20 yards.

You can cast four mind soothes in 6 seconds in a perfect world, 8-10 in one that includes fast tab-targeting. That gives you at worst 10 seconds to move up to 20 yards and spend 3 seconds casting Mind Control, at which time three mobs kill your proxy. Oh – at which time you run like mad or hope the rest of your party is on the ball.

By the way, this is the ‘trick’ for grabbing a mob out of a group if you’re a shadowpriest trying to “solo” the first area of shadow labyrinth. Mindsoothe the group, move up, mind control the mob you want to see die first. If his friends kill him, great. If not, you’re going to do three spells while running toward the door: Psychic scream, SW:P, and SW:D. Don’t leave till your target dies, but make sure you’re closer to the door than the feared mobs or you’ll play ghost.

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3 Responses to “Soothing Mind Control”

I’ve had little luck using MC in Heroic instances. The aggro it gens is just too high for even a very good tank to get them off me after I release before I’m dead. If it breaks…almost 100 percent death rate. Any suggestions? I’d like to bring CC to more instances than Seth Halls.

It wasn’t until doing lvl 70 instances with odd groups (having both a holy priest and holy pally in group) that I started using priests as viable CC classes in instances.

My main is a hunter. While I’d often have a target to trap, it was typically the 1st CCed target killed. (While I was dpsing and keeping my target down, I’d always keep a third eye on the Priest’s MCed target and try to toss a concussive shot or wingclip or scatter shot it when needed)

This left me time (as long as I hadn’t laid a trap recently) to drop a trap between the priest and his MCed mob. The mobcicle can then be taunted as need be.

Typically I try and use my own panic buttons (scatter shot or intimidation) to use to help out the priest as well.

While you won’t always have a hunter in your heroic, if you do, try to reason a bit with them… I’m an old school raider, so I still view one of my roles as “squishy shield”. If I can grab agro and kite them mob for a few seconds, or CC it, or let my mail+stamina soak up the one hit that would have killed the clothie, then that’s an option I attempt to exercise. :)

…Sometimes to the tank’s frustration… but that’s why god gave hunter’s feign death. (It’s not JUST for getting you healers killed, that’s just a bonus)

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.